Rowdies' gathering celebrates team, title, time

Saturday, Tampa Bay's first pro sports champs reunite after 25 years.

By RODNEY PAGE

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 4, 2000

There was that funky uniform with the yellow-and-green-striped tube socks, the western-outlaw look of the team's logo that seemed to leap off the jersey, and the red-mustachioed mascot, his arms flailing.

There were the players with strange accents and stranger soccer terms.

And then there was that song, that catchy, simplistic, can't-get-it-out-of-your-head song: The Rowdies run here/the Rowdies run there/they kick the ball around.

The Rowdies run here/the Rowdies run there,/then they fall on the ground.

Oh, The Row-dies, The Row-dies,

The Rowdies aaaaaaare, a kick-in-the-grass.

Players from that era will gather for a ceremony at Saturday's Major League Soccer game at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, where the Mutiny hosts Dallas.

But when the Rowdies burst onto the sparse Tampa Bay sports scene in 1975, all most locals knew about soccer was that the players ran around, kicked the ball, fell down.

"You couldn't even buy a soccer ball anywhere in the Tampa Bay area at that time," said Farrukh Quraishi, a Rowdies defender, then an assistant in public relations.

When that season ended, the Rowdies were champions of the North American Soccer League. It was the first professional sports championship for Tampa Bay. But then, there had never been a major-league pro team in the area.

The team and the league are long gone. The memories remain.

Saturday, they'll trade stories about that championship season, some of them true.

"It was the best four months of my soccer career," defender Mark Lindsay said.

In the beginning

On Nov. 18, 1974, Beau Rogers and George Strawbridge became co-owners of Tampa Bay's expansion franchise for $250,000.

First hired was coach Eddie Firmani, an assistant for Crystal Palace in the English Second Division. It was his job to round up players. He started by persuading three Crystal Palace players -- Lindsay, Stewart Jump and Paul Hammond -- to join him.

Then Firmani, without restrictions on the number of foreigners allowed on a roster, scoured England, Scotland and South Africa looking for young players.

"I knew a lot of the players from when I managed in England," he said. "At the time, I could get a free transfer for the players, which meant their club didn't want a transfer fee. I tried to find talented young players who might want to spend the summer in Tampa."

A salesman by nature -- Firmani now lives in Montreal and is executive vice president of sales for FieldTurf, the company that carpeted Tropicana Field -- he used those skills to lure players.

"It was a Wednesday night and the Scottish League games were played in the winter," said defender Alex Pringle, who played for Dundee. "It was cold and rainy. After the game, Eddie Firmani showed me a brochure of Tampa Bay. There were palm trees, Clearwater Beach.

"I signed right away."

Firmani had a first team comprised of foreigners. The five Americans, more than most NASL teams had, were reserves.

The hype

How to sell soccer to a community with little knowledge of or interest in this foreign game? The Rowdies did whatever it took.

"The people were very receptive," Quraishi said. "This was a community that wanted to know about soccer and it made things very enjoyable."

The Rowdies played preseason indoor games at St. Petersburg's Bayfront Center. The players were introduced as they entered the arena in Cadillacs before one game, on elephants before another.

Players staged clinics and started youth programs that still exist. And they spoke to countless community clubs and organizations.

"If it took going to Busch Gardens and playing with the chimps, we did it," said Francisco Marcos, the Rowdies public relations director. "If it took going to Disney World and heading soccer balls with the seals, we did it. We walked the entire route of the Gasparilla parade once, dribbling soccer balls. Any opportunity to sell the sport, we did it."

Added Firmani: "Yeah, my forehead was bleeding after that Gasparilla parade. Five miles without letting the ball touch the ground. Can you believe that?"

The Rowdies established a fan base before they ever played a game. The fan club was the "Fannies," the cheerleaders "Wowdies," the band "Loudies."

"They were only loud," Marcos said.

The season

On April 26, 1975, the Rowdies debuted in Tampa Stadium against the Rochester Lancers before 12,133. This was in pre-Buccaneer days, when the stadium seated 46,500, with no end zone seats.

"They only opened one side of the stadium," defender Mike Connell said. "On the other side, our advertising agency had cardboard cutouts (of fans) scattered throughout the other side. The cardboard cutouts had as much understanding of the game as the people watching."

Derek Smethurst scored the Rowdies' first goal. Pringle scored in overtime. The Rowdies won 2-1.

They finished their inaugural season 16-6, averaging 10,728 fans, fourth-best in the 20-team league. They beat Toronto 1-0 in the first round of playoffs, Miami 3-0 in the second round and won Soccer Bowl '75 at San Jose, Calif., beating Portland 2-0 on second-half goals by Arsene Auguste -- the only one he scored that year -- and Clyde Best. Goalkeeper Paul Hammond made 12 saves. Defender Stewart Jump was the game's most valuable player.

"It was a group of people that were destined to get together and care about what they were doing," Connell said. "I think all the players cared about our owner, George Strawbridge, and we had an obligation to do right by him. All of those things came together."

High times, low times

The Rowdies flourished. Forward Rodney Marsh joined in 1976 and instantly became the team's most recognizable player.

Crowds grew every year. In 1976 the average was 16,452. It peaked in 1980 at 28,435. A July 4, 1980, game drew 56,389.

There were two more trips to the Soccer Bowl, but never another championship.

The decline started in 1982. Two years later, average attendance was 10,932. The NASL, born in 1968, went belly up after the 1984 season. The Rowdies survived another eight years in an alphabet soup of indoor and outdoor leagues. Now Tampa Bay has the Mutiny.

Most of the original Rowdies had planned to play in Tampa during the summer to stay in shape, then return to their club teams. Instead, most remained. Many still live in Tampa.

The Rowdies are long gone but the memories are still fresh: those uniforms, that flamboyance, their championship.

And that darned song.

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.

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